In my case, I stuck with an alarm clock app that offers soothing wake-up calls and nerdy charting features that make for interesting water-cooler talk "My REM was so on last night!"

WSJ: High-Tech Sleep Aids: The Tech to Get Some Z's

"Six Degrees", by leading environmental campaigner Mark Lynas, sounds a red alert for the health of the planet, charting degree-by-degree the likely consequences of rising temperatures up to the worst-case scenario 5.8 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit) rise envisaged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2001 report.

CNN: Six degrees of devastation